End: The King Must Die.  (30)

The Moon over the Kings Graveyard.

 © Eso A. B., 2012

At 8:10 in the following link philosopher Žižek mentions “poetry”. What Žižek says is: “no ethnic cleanthing without poetry”, and goes on to state that some such “pervert strength” is needed to “arouse people”. Of course, Žižek does not recommend ethnic cleanthing, but the statement is made in view of the likelihood (fact, I would say) that we live in ‘the end time’. Unfortunately, the malaise of our times is such that most people act as if such an ‘end time’ will go on for ever.


The number of “my wealth virus” blogs shows that an ‘end time’ can go on for a long time.


[Originally, I visualized this series some 23 blogs long. 23 is a favourite number of mine. I heard the number in my ears out of the blue many decades ago (in the early 1980s) while walking along an a busily trafficked asphalt road in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and, of course, I thought it was a paraidelia of sound. In spite of the casualness of the moment, the memory of it will not go away to this day.)


In my case, the ‘Wealth Virus’ likely began with the arrival in Latvia of a Herrnhuter from somewhere in the Habsburg Empire, perhaps from Bosnia (where Žižek stems from). This was sometime in the middle of the 18^th century. The consequences of this arrival are still having effect on me, though in some ways my experience of the 20^th century has turned me sympathetic to Luddites, and would be happy to replace the automobile  (I believe the day will come when it will happen) with the horse.


Wherever else my subjective thoughts may have me think, they lead me to agree with Žižēk that there has to occur a moment that will “arouse people”. This is one reason why I hold on to my perception of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The play is both poetry and tragedy, and it has the potential of stirring up many people’s paraidolias concerning death. My personal paraidolic vision is that somehow a friendly and smiling Stalin appears before me, and offers me a shot of vodka along with a pistol. After we down the drink, Stalin takes the pistol and prepares to hand it to me, saying: “I am sorry, man, for being responsible your father was shot.” I take the pistol, but hand it back to Stalin, and say: “Joseph, I rather you do it yourself. Since you had your stroke young (72 years), I give you yet another nine years to live; but then—no ifs or but—just do it. I do not mind if you do not use the pistol. If you prefer, go ahead, and order the concoction from the Swiss, but you must gather the courage and take your life. I also do not mind if you travel to Latvia to do it, because the export of Euthanasia is the only way their economy can survive there.”


I am definitely against killing people or any live thing, for that matter, unless there has been some extreme provocation that involved loss of innocent life. At the same time, I am not against the so-called Sacred King (whoever he-she may be) ordering an execution by offering the murdered the opportunity to take his-her own life by his-he own hand.


This is what the citizens of Thebes (in the person of Tiresias) demanded from Oedipus Rex when the truth about him is discovered.

* * *


An interesting reverberation on self-sacrifice from China. Antiwar.com  refers to an AP article in the Washington Post, re “China Website Accuses Dalai Lama of ‘Nazi-Style’ Racial Policies, advocating Self-Immolations.'"


This author has for some time advocated the view that any self-enclosed government system (without an exit clause, by way of, for example, direct democratic elections) is innately a fascist form of government, because it advocates a welfare system for its own members, and is exclusionary with regard to equality to all who are not members of the government body or are in some other way outside the ‘system’.


The fact that the Chinese government finds the resistance of Tibetan monks and nuns through self-immolation (self-sacrifice) as ‘Nazi-Style’ is fer  One Who Flew Over the Cockoos Nest, or should one say  ‘Chinese policy of acquiring more Lebensraum at the expense of Tibetan freedom to chose their own communal way of being?’ What will the Chinese government say when the Chinese people themselves will begin to resist their fascists? Call them “Nazis?”


“Oedipux Rex Rewritten” is a universally known tragedy that clearly responds to the presumptions of Chinese government’s fascist presumptions, which, as the play’s centuries long repression gives evidence to, is nothing new. Maybe it is time for Chinese government officials to earn their charisma by self-sacrifice, and if they do not like to do it the hard way by self-immolation, then go to Switzerland and do it the painless way.

Blog-end Adlibs: [III] Stalin Died a Murderer (27)

© Eso A. B., 2012

Anyone with a little  literary education in the classical sense, who knows something of the stories important to humankind, realizes after reading my blogspot that the Freudian interpretation of Oedipus Rex, which gave the story its 20^th century seal, is a Pop Culture version of the real thing. This version suits the mindset of liberal capitalist ideology, which today, just a decade into the 21^st century, pretends to being a secular religion and is waging a crusade to install itself as an institution into perpetuity.

From this writer’s perspective (near eighty years of hindsight), the 20^th century ended in mid-20^th-century with the end of WW2, and two of the most important post-WW2 events: the death (1945) of Hitler and the deadh (1953) of Stalin.

The other half of the 20^th century became preoccupied with the victorious liberal capitalist West (chiefly the U.S. and its recently organized NATO allies in Europe) attempting to lead an irresolute humankind in an irresolute way toward a premature death. The death of humankind was solicited in several ways: a) by encouraging overconsumption and the consequent rapid depletion of natural resources (forests, oil) anddegradation of Earth’s environment as a whole; and b) chemical pollution of the human body.

Secularism, having succeeded in recreating itself as a humanitarian theology, continues to subjugate humankind to will of the chief sponsors of this “new” theology—the banks and other oligarchs. The corporation as an individual had overcome mere humanity, and there was no weapon that anyone knew of to oppose this giant.

Which brings us to reminding the reader of the story of David and Goliath. Heretofore, the attention of listeners of this story has been directed toward a tiny individual overcoming a giant by a perfectly aimed stone, which hit the giant directly in the forehead. Henceforth, we will direct our attention from the forehead to the eye of the giant, his modern version being more like that of a Cyclops, a single eyed monster. In our time, the single or the all encompassing eye plays a greater role than the head as a whole, because today the eye looks like a hologram. This is the reason, why Goliath need not be struck by a rock, but by a well aimed story. This is why traditional violence in opposing the corporate enemy is no longer overt violence (as once envisioned by the Bolsheviks), but a true story.

The 20^th century produced several true stories, which humankind not only saw in four dimensions (the 4^th dimension outdoing the 3^rd by also being Live and On Air). The stories are generally summed up by a few words: Hitler, Stalin, and Uncle Sam.

The essence of the stories of the above was that all promised humankind that after they were done told, society would be enjoying a state of economic egalitarianism.

Absolute economic equality or egalitarianism was implicit in Hitler’s and Stalin’s political promise to the people who made up the ‘populists’ segment of the people living under their control. It was the egalitarian message that made both men saints in the eyes of the people they led, even though both saints were—due to circumstantial reasons—bitter enemies, even enemies unto death.

Very possibly, it was the ‘circumstantial reasons’ (the men lived in territories adjacent to each other and attempted to bring equality to their supporters at the expense of the other population), which caused humankind to emerge from WW2 with egalitarianism continuing to be a disputed assumption. No doubt, Hitler’s Reich attempted to enlarge the egalitarian living space for only the German folk, while Stalin’s Soviets pretended to fight for a globalized human paradise. Both would probably prescribe to Marx’ famous phrase: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Both Hitler and Stalin perceived that their respective societies (for different reasons) were likely to be repressed by the emergence of successful colonial powers and American capitalism. Colonialism and American capitalism were in an expansionist mood, the expansionism motivated by success (the American cyclops had the ‘ability’ to exploit America’s yet unexploited land mass) and perceived that in order to continue with its success and way of life, liberal capitalism ‘needed’ to control the resources of the globe.

It is of course ‘old hat’ that WW2 ended with the defeat of Hitler, and the discovery that the ‘bias’ that fueled his aggression was anti-semitism.

While few people today connect anti-semitism with Christian heretics, this writer has long (“The Death of 4 European Gods”, Trafford, 2005) argued that Christianity is indeed both ‘older’ and ‘younger’ that orthodox historians allow. The evidence that a ‘heretical’ Christianity preceded Catholic orthodoxy is presented in the same ‘old’ New Testament, where one John (actually Johns, because John was many) is said to be the precursor of Jesus. With the slaughter of the Jews by Hitler, a secular ‘catholic’ (or Christian) ideology ended its program of ‘cleansing’ society of the dissenters to secular order.

The dependence of Hitler for authority on anti-semitism destroys any pretentions he may have had to ‘sainthood’—even if one cannot deny that within his closed (fascist) society of the German Reich, he had persuaded the German people that among Germans he favored egalitarianism. Indeed, the German people remained largely united under this egalitarian ideology long after WW2, because losing the war did not lose Hitler his charisma. Hitler remained a charismatic persona, because of the fact that he had the courage to die by his own hand, and absorb much of the blame for what had gone wrong onto himself. In a post-war society turned toxic by meaningless verbiage churned out by advertisements for liberal capitalism, Hitler’s charisma even if itself toxic, was not destroyed.

Stalin emerged from WW2 as a victor. This is not to deny the ‘red terror’, the 10 to 20 million deaths he caused, his failures to analyze the ultimate potential of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenins criticism and testament of Stalin, and Stalin’s suppression of the testament. However, the following quote of the opening sentences of Stalins speech at Lenin’s funeral (1924) gives us an insight into his private thoughts or, as we may say, his ‘spiritual high’:

“Comrades, we Communists are people of a special mould. We are made of a special stuff. We are those who form the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of Comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honor of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the Party whose founder and leader was Comrade Lenin. It is not given to everyone to be a member of such a party. It is not given to everyone to withstand the stresses and storms that accompany membership in such a party.”

However, when all was said and done, and none of the many dead rose from the dead, Stalin’s ego got the better of him: he failed to realize himself in the role of the Sacred King, but, instead, acted as if he was not to suffer death. The clearest evidence for this is Stalin’s persecution of Jewish doctors in the so-called ‘doctors' plot’ and apparently never having given a thought of death as having an important role to play in the life of not only a nation’s ruler, but the nation itself.

Because the charisma of Stalin remains that of a murderer, who did not wash himself with the waters of Lethe, and because post-Soviet Russia does not acknowledge Stalin’s evident inhumanity, Russian leadership and role in global geopolitics remains unattractive and uncharismatic.